


Testing Control

by Sakiku



Series: An Exercise in Control [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Puppets, Siblings, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-02
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 16:52:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sakiku/pseuds/Sakiku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kankuro tries his skills with Sasori in a spar against Temari.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Testing Control

  


**Fandom:** Naruto

**Character:** Kankuro, Temari, Sasori

 **Words:** 3k

**Rating:** PG-13

**Summary** : Kankuro tries his skills with Sasori in a spar against Temari. Sequel to "[An Exercise in Control](http://sakiku.livejournal.com/5015.html)"

 **Warning** : None.

\--*--*--*--

**An Exercise in Control II**

“You know, that's creepy.”

Kankuro briefly looked up to see his sister standing in the doorway, fingering her battle-fan impatiently. “What is creepy?”

“That!”

He followed her gaze towards where he was currently making Sasori paint its fingernails. It was a difficult exercise, testing both the puppet's dexterity and his control to its limits. The next step up was going to be writing; for now, handling the paint brush at all was almost more than he could deal with.

And, of course, during his distraction, the puppet had stopped in mid-motion, and a pearly drop of nail polish was starting to gather at the tip of its brush. With a quiet swear (because nail polish was damn hard to get out of wood, let alone carpet or the faux-skin covering the puppet's hands), Kankuro made Sasori pat the brush against a rag to prevent any spill.

Only then did he remember that his sister was still standing in the doorway. “There's still work to do before it's perfect. Any reason you're here?”

“You owe me a spar.”

Meaning: she had a new technique, or at least a new variation on one of her techniques to try out. And she was looking for a poor, innocent victim to try her technique out against.

What a coincidence. He had made a couple of new installations along Sasori's frame that he was just burning to test out. Instead of cackling like a hyena though, Kankurou scowled. Wouldn't do to appear too eager. Might tip her off that he had a couple of surprises she didn't know about yet.

“Now?”

“Yes, NOW!”

Her irritation was entirely unfaked, contrary to his. “If you insist,” he grumbled.

He made Sasori help him put away the coloring equipment, the puppet's motions quick and controlled. It was a bit of a problem of how hard he should make the puppet grip breakable things like the make-up jars, because he didn't get any sensory feed-back from the wooden fingers. With Karasu and co, he had never run across that problem because his battle-puppets only had to hold kunai, shuriken, wire – generally: sturdy weapons. However, he had learned to adapt, and it was only on very rare instances that his grip was too light or too strong to hold an item.

Temari was tapping her feet impatiently, and Kankuro smirked inwardly.

“You can go on ahead,” he said absently, “I need to prepare Sasori for the spar.”

The perfect statement to rile her up.

She bristled, her hand tightening around the main body of her battle fan. “And you expect to be able to tell an enemy nin that, sorry, you first have to prepare your puppets for battle?”

He gave his sister a long look. While he had expected Temari to get angry at his stalling, he hadn't expected her to resort to this. They hadn't had _that_ kind of argument for nearly four years. She must be very impatient today. “Unless you prefer me to hit you with mustard gas and my personal atropine derivate, then yes, you will give me time.”

Scowling, she stalked out of Kankuro's workplace, slamming the door behind her.

He raised an eyebrow (and reflexively made Sasori raise his, too). Maybe his assumption that she had a new technique to try out, had been a bit presumptuous. She certainly sounded rather like she was trying to work off some frustration. Had her current bed-warmer, Yuugo, Yuuki, Yuu-something, not been up to scratch this morning? Maybe he should offer Sasori's help, simply to see whether the puppet was capable of satisfying a woman. It _did_ have the anatomically correct equipment, after all.

Then again, he wasn't very keen on having to repair Sasori so soon again. Temari was bound to take offense to such a suggestion.

With a shrug, he disrobed the puppet and made to exchange the poisonous components of its weapons department.

Well, at least most of them. He wasn't going to dislodge Sasori's teeth to get to the senbon behind them, because for one, it was a lot of work, and for another, he never completely disarmed his puppets in case an emergency came up. It had absolutely nothing to do with the poison of the senbon having soaked into the compartment they were stored in, and he'd have to completely dismantle Sasori's head to get to the spot to clean out all deadly residue so that he might carry some less toxic versions.

The gas grenades he left alone, too, because it was a bit idiotic to try and subdue a wind-mistress with poisonous mist. The best he would be able to hope for was that she didn't blow the resulting gas cloud into his face. And while he did have his immunities, getting a face full of tear gas wasn't very comfortable.

With a quick pat to Sasori's shoulder, he made his chakra threads close the compartments and had the puppet redress itself. The motion wasn't quite natural yet, but only a skilled observer would see the slightly awkward way the puppet struggled to put both arms into the long coat at the same time. Then he reset the security seals on his workroom and jumped to the roof-tops, Sasori in tow.

It certainly wasn't hard to find his sister – she was at the training ground where they had spent most of their time when they had been still genin under Baki's guidance. As soon as she saw Sasori, he was greeted with a forceful swing of her fan in his direction. Kankuro smirked. He had already separated from Sasori, hiding himself beneath several concealment jutsu that allowed him to view the entire battlefield without endangering himself. If he played his cards right, he might be able to convince her that he had henged into his puppet, and that Sasori was laying in wait for her.

He put a smirk on Sasori's face (and didn't think of how he had put the exact same smirk on the puppet's face when he'd had his dick down its throat).

There was sand, certainly. Much sand to be blown about by his sister's winds. She went so far as to produce a miniature sand storm, with visibility suddenly becoming quite bad. Did she think that it affected Sasori? A puppet didn't have any flesh to be abraded by the tiny grains, and Kankuro had several other tricks up his sleeve that made low visibility not too much of a problem.

Nonetheless, he barely managed to twist his puppet out of the way of the oncoming gales. The furrows they left in the ground spoke of them being laced with plenty of energy and, more importantly, wind blades. He had made that mistake only once, trying to block a wind blade with Karasu. Karasu had lost an arm that day.

But not Sasori. Kankuro had twisted him out of the way quickly enough, and had already made the puppet bury itself underground. And now, Temari had to stop blowing up so much sand because, as much cover it gave her, it reduced her visibility just as much.

While most of the dust was settling, Kankuro was already working on the next part: deception. He was going to make Sasori cast a jutsu, firming Temari's assumption that Sasori was Kankuro in disguise. Because it was impossible for puppets to cast jutsu.

He bit his lips. Slowly, he forced more chakra down the invisible threads connecting him to Sasori. Shaped chakra.

Sweat was gathering on his brow, because it took nearly inhuman concentration to keep the chakra in its shape, hold the connection to Sasori, and send it to the puppet at the same time. If he succeeded in his task, Sasori was going to do a bunshin – hopefully enough to distract Temari for a short while. It had taken Kankuro a long time to discover this masterpiece of ingenuity: the ability to have Sasori cast ninjutsu.

With all his other puppets, Kankuro had to cast techniques on them, like the henge he often used to make Karasu take his place.

With Sasori, he could cast jutsu _through_ it.

A careful twist of his fingers, and Sasori's hands twisted into the ram position. Throughout the entire puppet's interior, a thin web of chakra-conductive wire imitated a human's chakra system. Starting with the center in the lower abdomen, right next to a couple of gas grenades, then up and out through the Gates towards the extremities, until hair-thin tenketsu allowed the chakra to spill outward.

His control was wavering, and he nearly lost his hold on the molded chakra. A desperate push though convinced it to spill into Sasori's artificial channels, and from there it wasn't too hard a task to push it out towards the surface.

Kankuro smirked as two Sasori rose from the sand, one dashing to his right, the other to his left. Temari immediately sent another gust of wind after the bunshin, and it took her a few seconds to notice that the Sasori she had aimed at remained entirely unaffected.

With a blank face, Kankuro twitched a few threads that gave the real Sasori just enough momentum to launch tiny, sand-colored darts from his knee at Temari's shins. In a real fight, those darts would be laced with either deadly poisons or, depending on the mission, strong paralytics. (Kankuro preferred paralytics to sedatives, because less shinobi had built a resistance to them.)

Right now, they wouldn't do more than sting because Kankuro had dipped them in nettle juice, his standard choice for spars. And judging by Temari's annoyed hiss, at least one of the darts had found their goal.

He smirked. Maybe, just maybe, he had also added a component that was going to make her skin numb for the foreseeable future. Knee-darts – success.

Sasori and its bunshin didn't stop at that minor victory. They continued circling around Temari, hopefully confusing her as to which one was real. She reacted by jumping high into the air, using her fan to attack and propel her further into the air at the same time.

That, finally, was enough to dispel the bunshin. Kankuro used the needle launcher implanted into Sasori's palm to send up a thin stream of senbon, but Temari easily waved them aside.

Just as well. With Karasu, there would have been a flamethrower in that location, dealing quite a bit more damage as fire fed on wind. But Kankuro had foregone placing any heavy weaponry on Sasori because he hoped to develop Sasori's jutsu casting ability to make up for that. He kind of regretted that decision for now, because he hadn't practiced anything harder than D-rank techniques yet.

Then again...

With a smirk, he sent the chakra for yet another jutsu towards Sasori. This time, it was even harder because Sasori had to continuously avoid Temari's wind blades from above. The occasional stray one even went so far that Kankuro had to take care not to be hit himself.

But the jutsu went through, and in a puff of smoke Sasori replaced itself with Temari's fan. It was a pity that Kankuro was too far away to see the expression on Temari's face upon suddenly holding on to Sasori, because he would bet half his salary that it was priceless.

Together, they plummeted towards the ground, Sasori trying to pin Temari's arms to her side, and Temari trying to reach one of her smaller fans. Kankuro used the time to hit Temari with a couple more nettle darts, but before he could initiate anything bigger she had regained her composure.

It was a bit disappointing that Temari was quicker, so before she could decapitate Sasori, Kankuro made the puppet separate itself from his sister. Not without gifting her with a couple of kunai to her face though. It served as enough of a distraction that Sasori could get away without any serious damage and leave behind some downsized exploding tags. They puffed into her face – once again not enough power to do any real damage – and allowed Kankuro to flip Sasori around so that he landed closest to her battle-fan.

She was panting harshly as she touched down on the ground. Kankuro made Sasori do the same, simply for the fun of it. Heaving chests always were good for pretending life.

“Ready to give up?” he made Sasori shout. Despite all his practice, it still sounded a tad monotone. He'd have to see that he modulated the voice a bit to simulate emotions.

Temari snorted. “Are _you_ ready to give up?” she retorted and, in the same motion, whipped out a second small fan. The resulting wind blades went considerably wide of Sasori, but had an astonishing precision in homing in on Kankuro.

He cursed. He shouldn't have stayed in one spot for this long. He had been overly reliant on his stealth and concealment jutsus, but it was evident that Temari had seen through them. In a real battle though this probably wouldn't have happened because Kankuro would have had his other puppets to serve as further distraction and as a shield.

Ducking beneath the wind blades, he made Sasori engage her again, always trying to force her away from both her great fan and Kankuro's position.

It was a serious pain in the ass to fight against a long-distance-fighter like her. She saw to it that he never came close enough to hurt her directly, and any projectiles she could wave away with a single swing of her fans. Additionally, the distance gave her valuable split-seconds of reaction time to any attack Kankuro made. He should have made better use of his surprise kawarimi, like unveiling one of the hidden blades he had installed in Sasori's arms, or use the poisoned stinger in its abdomen. He certainly had been close enough then to deal a decisive blow.

Time for another approach.

Sasori released one of its smoke bombs, resulting in a deep black shroud expanding from its location. Temari blasted away the mist quickly enough, but by then Kankuro had already hidden his puppet. Understandably wary, she stepped away from her previous location. At least she couldn't take to the air now with only her two minor fans. One headache out of the way.

A small application of chakra aided Sasori in moving underground, swimming through the heated sand without leaving any betraying ripples on the surface. Kankuro slowly made his way towards her battle-fan, but even concealed as he was beneath heavy layers of genjutsu, she spotted him. He had to do some hasty maneuvering to keep his limbs in one piece, hiding his smirk. As long as she was focused on him, she didn't watch for Sasori who was setting up for another hit. And he could afford to wait her out. Her legs had to be quite numb by now, robbing her of a large part of her mobility.

Then she directed one of her wind blades towards the ground, blowing up a huge cloud of sand.

At first Kankuro didn't realize what she had done, because neither he nor Sasori were close enough to be affected. But when he tried to get his puppet to move further towards her back, he cursed. The explosion of chakra had severed a large part of his threads, and Kankuro had to be closer than ten feet to reestablish the connections. He did have some control over Sasori, but by far too little to keep it useful.

In a last-ditch attempt, he once again sent a kawarimi down the two threads he still had left, hoping to replace Sasori with her fan to take it out of the picture for good. However, now just had to be the time when the jutsu failed him. Instead of replacing itself with the fan, Sasori merely produced a cloudy puff of excess chakra, drawing her attention to its location.

Before she could send another wind blade at the defenseless puppet, Kankuro revealed himself and raised his hands. “Stop!”

“What!?” she shouted, chakra gleaming from the edge of her fan.

“I give up! You win.” He certainly didn't want to spend another month on rebuilding Sasori just because he was too stubborn to lose a spar.

It was easy to admit his defeat, because both of them knew that in a real battle, Kankuro's lucky hit with the darts at the beginning would have killed her by now. And Kankuro could have used more of his puppets to aid both him and Sasori. On the other hand, she could have used her thrice-cursed weasels, too.

Well, maybe it was more of a draw than he wanted to admit. At least, until he became proficient enough in fire jutsu to cast them through Sasori.

Once he was sure that Temari wouldn't attack anymore, he went to his puppet to reconnect the chakra threads. It was quite a bit harder to reach the anchors through more than a meter of sand, but he managed. Then he made Sasori rise from its desert grave, shaking off most of the sand. He just hoped that Sasori's mouth hadn't opened accidentally when he had lost the the connections. Because sand grains tended to stick to the lubricating grease that kept Sasori's vocal apparatus oiled, and he'd have to clean everything out before he could do some of his other... exercises again.

In response to his fussing about Sasori, she scowled at him and limped over to her battle-fan. She inspected it meticulously, although what could have damaged the steel ribs and wire-mesh paper, Kankuro didn't know.

With another scowl, she gestured at her legs. “How long until it wears off?”

“Three to five hours, depending on how many and how deep they got you.”

“Hn. We're doing this again tomorrow,” she declared as she stalked off, not in a much better mood than she had been before. Hopefully Yuu-something would do his duty and get her laid before then. Otherwise, her frustration was going to be twice as bad as today, and Kankruo had noticed how she had barely held herself back from releasing the wind-blades at Sasori despite Kankuro's surrender.

He made Sasori look after her with a frown. Well, at least one good thing had come from the spar: he knew that the knee-darts worked. He had wanted to test the elbow-spikes and his newly invented Akahigi Kiki Sankaku, too, but he hadn't found an opportunity. Stupid wind abilities..

Absently, he made Sasori dust himself off. Sand rained off the faux-skin and from the artificial hair and from the clothes and from practically everywhere.

He sighed. To the workshop it was, because it sounded like some of the sand had gotten into Sasori's lungs. And some of the nail polish had gotten chipped.

Well, time for yet another exercise in control.

  
  



End file.
